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Editorials

The last time the Jeffco Public Library saw a tax increase, the Internet was still a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. Nor had DVDs been invented. E-books? Forget it. “Portable” computers that didn’t result in a hernia? Surely you jest.

In fact, the last time our library saw a boost in taxpayer support was some 29 years ago, and since then in Jefferson County, demand for services that the library offers has exploded:

As my term in office approaches its final days, I’m experiencing a great deal of personal reflection. I’m sure everyone goes through a similar process of recounting how they reacted to a situation or event, sorting out in their mind if they could have done something different — while recalling the successes and failures along the way.

Olli Maatta, a 20-year-old hockey player from Finland, was living the dream. A year ago, he broke into the Pittsburgh Penguins’ lineup as a teenager and became one of their regular defensemen, and he was widely recognized as being among the National Hockey League’s top rookies.

Maybe they just got tired of being called the new conservative majority.

How else can you explain school board members Ken Witt, John Newkirk and Julie Williams voting to pay, including performance incentives, new superintendent Daniel McMinimee almost 40 percent more than his predecessor and to give him a five-year contract despite the fact that he’s never been a superintendent before? The decision doesn’t meet any definition of conservative I’ve ever heard.

Six hundred and forty-three thousand. That’s more than half a million.
And those are more than enough reasons that two longtime incumbents on the board of the Inter-Canyon Fire Protection District should be challenged aggressively in this May’s election.
Zero is another number of note in this disturbing saga: That’s the number of non-incumbents who had filed to run, as of Tuesday, for the four board seats up for election.

The flooding that hit Evergreen and parts of Jefferson and Clear Creek counties on Friday the 13th in September presented our four newspapers with the same challenge we face on a daily basis: Trying to cover stories that often overwhelm our resources in their scope and impact.

An early giant in the journalism trade was fond of saying that practically every political story boils down to two issues: conflict and cash.
And while our members of Congress continue to clash over cash, the Jeffco school district is cramming our news columns with conflict, both ideological and, now, physical.
The months-long controversy over the district’s plan to test the inBloom system for storing student information boiled over last week when shoving broke out between a resident and two district staff members at a school board meeting.

Six years ago two members of the Evergreen Fire Protection District board were recalled in an election that divided the community and left bad feelings all around. Their opponents charged that they were unresponsive to the community.
Today, four members of the EFPD board face a recall election April 23, engineered by opponents of the district’s intention to construct a training building at Station 2 in Bergen Park. The board members’ detractors charge that they have been unresponsive to the community.